Top ten stops on August's memory lane

Opening tonight at the Village East in Manhattan is August, the Indiewood tale starring Josh Hartnett of an Internet startup's collapse on the eve of September 11th. The film is an homage to an era of excess gone sour, and we figured we'd sum up the references for those of you who were there to reminisce and for those of you who weren't to get an idea of what you missed. In this clip early in the film former John Hancock Tech Fund manager Marc Klee plays himself as an analyst discussing the fictional company in the film, LandShark, shortly after a gangbuster IPO.

"Any asshole in an Aeron chair, he's a fucking portal." Funny! That is, unless you're Yahoo, which thanks to Google doesn't have much business left besides as a content portal.

Tom (Hartnett) learns of layoffs at Pseudo.com — the real fake company of the era, according to founder Josh Harris.

Yes, that's an Apple Cube followed by an early PowerBook. Not to mention the nice detail of the period sound effects for sending and receiving in Mail.app.

Another actual reference, this time to Charlie Corwin, co-founder of LifeMusicChannel, an streaming video pioneer and early partner of MP3.com.

Yes, the Koosh™ — one of the ubiquitous toys that made working at an Internet company so much cooler than working at IBM, though maybe not if your options were underwater. Also served as handy double entendré for mating pairs looking to hook up after vesting.

In this scene, Rip Torn parrots Ed Bradley in the infamous 60 Minutes moment when RazorFish CEO Jeff Dachis choked on national television.

Here's the Jason Calacanis moment, in case you missed it in my overwrought review. Young Xeni Jardin, Clay Shirky and Rafat Ali all worked for his Silicon Alley Reporter hyping the New York tech scene before it imploded.

"B2B or not B2B." Yes, Howard Rodman manages to work a Hamlet reference into Hartnett's soliloquy.

And last but certainly not least, the scene where Hartnett's Tom finds his employees chuckling as they read LandShark's listing on FuckedCompany — creator Phillip Kaplan went on to found AdBrite, which from rumors we've heard might deserve a listing of its own soon enough.